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Homer Thompson Dies at 93; Led Excavation of the Agora

Homer A. Thompson, an archaeologist who for decades led the sweeping and painstaking excavation of the Agora, the civic center of ancient Athens, died Sunday at his home in Hightstown, N.J. He was 93.

Dr. Thompson brought high intelligence, keen intuition and boundless energy to reconstructing the life of a long-lost civilization by examining evidence as slight as minute disturbances in piles of tiny rocks. When the work began in 1931, no one was certain even of where the Agora was. (The name is sometimes translated as market but more closely means ''the coming together place.'')

With the discovery of hundreds, then thousands and finally tens of thousands of artifacts, the picture came into sharper and sharper focus. But no evidence, no matter how extensive, is useful without shrewd and informed interpretation, the kind Dr. Thompson provided.

For example, in 1962 he solved the puzzle of why a buried temple had a foundation hundreds of years newer than the structure it supported. The answer was that the Romans, who admired classical Greek architecture, meticulously rebuilt the temple, an accomplishment often called the first example of historic preservation.

Richard H. Howland, an archaeologist who retired from the Smithsonian Institution 15 years ago and who worked for years on the Athens dig with Dr. Thompson, called him ''the outstanding classical archaeologist of his generation, perhaps of two generations.''

Dr. Thompson also displayed modesty, patience and a certain shyness as he passed encouragement and knowledge to new generations of archaeologists, his colleagues and former students said.

''He told you, he didn't talk at you,'' said Doreen Canaday Spitzer, an archaeologist who studied with Dr. Thompson when the Agora dig began. ''There was a great human quality to him.''

He met his future wife, Dorothy Burr, in Athens when she was the first woman to be appointed a fellow of the Athenian Agora excavations. They married two years later, and she became an authority on Greek terra cotta and used her research on ancient gardens to replant the Agora.

Homer Armstrong Thompson was born on Sept. 7, 1906, in Devlin, Ontario, and grew up in a farming community about 90 miles north of Vancouver. ''Both my mother and father were sympathetic to the classics and urged me gently in that direction,'' he said.

He received undergraduate and master's degrees from the University of British Columbia, majoring in the classics. He earned his doctorate from the University of Michigan, where a faculty member, Benjamin Dean Merritt, introduced him to the project that would occupy him for the rest of his life.

The American School of Classical Studies at Athens was about to excavate the center of Athens, and Dr. Thompson was one of the first two fellows selected to participate. For the 39 years that began on May 25, 1931, he would be either acting deputy or field director of the excavations.

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Though Greek and German teams had done some previous archaeological work in the Agora, its location was only vaguely known. ''The difficulties were appalling,'' Dr. Thompson said. More than 400 modern houses had to be removed.

In addition to his work on the Agora, Dr. Thompson explored the Pnyx, where the assembly of Athenians met. He participated in the digs mainly in the summer. The rest of the year, he was a professor of classical archaeology at the University of Toronto and curator of the Royal Ontario Museum's classical collection.

During World War II, when the Agora work was interrupted, Dr. Thompson was an intelligence officer in the Royal Canadian Navy. Mrs. Thompson taught his classes at the University of Toronto.

In 1947, he was appointed professor of classical archaeology at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, N.J., where he spent the rest of his scholarly life. He was named director of the Agora excavations the same year. In 1949, with the end of Greece's civil war, he returned to Athens to reopen the excavations.

Meticulous research allowed him to pinpoint the location of major monuments, which were quickly uncovered. As thousands of relics accumulated, it became clear that the old storage and study areas were inadequate. There was also no museum space to display the finds to the public.

Dr. Thompson decided to do an exact reconstruction of one of the ancient buildings in the Agora. Through the use of ancient building materials and a full floor plan that had been unearthed, a two-story-tall stoa, a form of ancient Greek public building, was erected. Financed by the Rockefeller family, the Ford Foundation and others, the stoa, which now houses a museum, was the first step in a continuing plan to make the exposed remains of the ancient city into an archaeological park planted with the species used in antiquity.

Dr. Thompson oversaw the development of two series of publications on the Agora, one aimed at a scholarly audience and the other for the public but written by scholars. He wrote the definitive analysis of Greek pottery from the end of the fourth century B.C. to the end of the second century B.C. This was the period of the red-figure style, used on the most famous of ancient potteries.

His own books were often applauded by critics. Writing in the American Journal of Archaeology in 1941, Oscar Broneer wrote that Dr. Thompson's 1940 book ''The Tholos of Athens and its Predecessors'' exhibited ''the author's methodical observation and careful recording of all the evidence bearing on the subject; and, on the other, his ingenuity and the soundness of his judgment in the interpretation of existing remains.''

In addition to his wife, Dr. Thompson is survived by three daughters, Hope T. Kerr of Cedar Grove, N.J., Hilary T. Kenyon of West Hartford, Conn., and Pamela Sinkler-Todd of Philadelphia; eight grandchildren; and three great-grandchildren.

His work in Athens continues, as excavations are being done and more are planned on the northern part of the site. Dr. Howland said that archaeology had entered its ''post-Thompson era.''

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A version of this obituary; biography appears in print on May 13, 2000, on Page A00014 of the National edition with the headline: Homer Thompson Dies at 93; Led Excavation of the Agora. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe